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Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar

Biography

Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Professor of Political Science (by courtesy)CDDRL, CISAC, and FSE Affiliated Faculty

Mariano-Florentino Cuellar teaches and writes primarily about administrative, criminal, and international law, and has additional interests in public organizations, legislation, public health law, and immigration and citizenship. He is the Director of Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Institute, the Stanley Morrison Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, and Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science. A member of the Stanford faculty since 2001, he has worked in two presidential administrations, served as Co-Director of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and has an extensive record of involvement in public service.

During 2009-2010, he served as Special Assistant to the President for Justice and Regulatory Policy at the White House. Among other issues, Cuéllar worked on enhancing food safety standards, improving public health agencies, law enforcement and sentencing policy, regulatory transparency, immigration, and the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. Before working at the White House, he co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition’s Immigration Policy Working Group. During the second term of the Clinton Administration, he worked at the U.S. Department of the Treasury as Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Enforcement, where he focused on countering financial crime, improving border coordination, and enhancing anti-corruption measures.

In July 2010, the President appointed him to the Council of the Administrative Conference of the United States, an independent agency charged with improving the efficiency and fairness of federal regulatory programs. From 2011 to early 2013, he co-chaired the Department of Education’s Equity and Excellence Commission. He is a board member of the American Constitution Society as well as the Constitution Project, a non-profit think tank that builds bipartisan consensus on constitutional and legal issues.

After graduating from Calexico High School in California’s Imperial Valley, he received an A.B. magna cum laude from Harvard, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford. He clerked for Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and is a member of the American Law Institute and the Council on Foreign Relations.